Effectiveness And Efficiency Of Defense Environmental Cleanup Activities Of The Department Of Energys Office Of Environmental Management Report 2

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) was established by Congress in 1989 to remediate waste and environmental contamination that have resulted from nuclear weapons production and related activities. It has expended almost $200 billion on cleanup and related activities since its establishment and completed cleanup at all but 15 of the more than 100 sites. At the request of Congress, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine formed a committee to provide advice on enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of DOE-EM cleanup activities, particularly with respect to project management, contracting, and oversight practices. These recommendations were provided in two reports. The first report, Review of Effectiveness and Efficiency of Defense Environmental Cleanup Activities of DOE's Office of Environmental Management: Report 1, considered overall project management practices, project management metrics and outcomes, and contract structures and performance measures. This second report focuses on specific DOE-EM sites to assess how effective the management of the numerous projects at the sites is contributing to the wider programmatic objectives of DOE-EM.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies have conducted activities to develop atomic energy for civilian and defense purposes since the initiation of the World War II Manhattan Project in 1942. These activities took place at large federal land reservations of hundreds of square miles involving industrial-scale operations, but also at many smaller federal and non-federal sites such as uranium mines, materials processing and manufacturing facilities. The nuclear weapons and energy production activities at these facilities produced large quantities of radioactive and hazardous wastes and resulted in widespread groundwater and soil contamination at these sites. DOE initiated a concerted effort to clean up these sites beginning in the 1980s. Many of these sites have been remediated and are in long-term caretaker status, closed or repurposed for other uses. Review of the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Defense Environmental Cleanup Activities of the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management: First Report provides background information on the sites currently assigned to the DOE's Office of Environmental Management that are undergoing cleanup; discusses current practices for management and oversight of the cleanups; offers findings and recommendations on such practices and how progress is measured against them; and considers the contracts under which the cleanups proceed and how these have been and can be structured to include incentives for improved cost and schedule performance.

The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management is developing a technology roadmap to guide planning and possible future congressional appropriations for its technology development programs. It asked the National Research Council of the National Academies to provide technical and strategic advice to support the development and implementation of this roadmap, specifically by undertaking a study that identifies principal science and technology gaps and their priorities for the cleanup program based on previous National Academies reports, updated and extended to reflect current site conditions and EM priorities and input form key external groups, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Environmental Protection Agency, and state regulatory agencies. In response, this book provides a high-level synthesis of principal science and technology gaps identified in previous NRC reports in part 1. Part 2 summarizes a workshop meant to bring together the key external groups to discuss current site conditions and science and technology needs.

This report responds to your subcommittee's request that we examine Department of Defense (DOD) policies and practices regarding cleanup of environmental contamination at government owned, contractor operated (GOCO) plants, as a follow up to our previous reports that showed inconsistent policies and practices on cost sharing. We reviewed nine higher-cost case studies at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the military services (1) to assess the consistency of cost-sharing practices across DOD and (2) to compare the service cleanup estimates against DOD'S. Specifically, we identified the actions taken and the types of arrangements for sharing cleanup costs between the government and other responsible parties, and examined site-specific cleanup cost data.

The Dept. of Energy (DOE) has made great progress in accelerating the pace of cleanup over the past few years, and current estimates show that 80% of the Environmental Management site cleanups will be completed by the year 2021. These changes reflect a more focused technical baseline -- oriented towards results and fueled by performance-based contracts -- and a fundamental change in strategy, which involves: addressing urgent risks first; stabilizing sites; investing in technology development and basic science; reducing mortgage costs; and basing decisions on future land use considerations.